On the other side of the river from The Naomi Center and about 10 miles from the Republican National Convention sits the Guthrie Theatre, one of the more highly regarded performing arts companies in the US. We were there to see Little House on the Prairie with Melissa Gilbert staring as ‘Ma’ Ingalls.

This production was really outstanding, entertaining, and funny. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Well, except for one disturbing issue – the family values it espouses.

Little House on the Prairie has poor family values? This stage performance must be a gross distortion of the books and TV series right?

It unfortunately does have poor family values. And so to the books and TV series. Worse, it celebrates these poor family values. In the play, as in real life, when Laura Ingalls is 15 she begins a courtship with Almanzo Wilder who in the book is 24. Statutory rape? Well, we don’t really know what happened during the courtship, but they did marry when Laura was 16 and Almanzo 26, an act that would constitute rape in a number of US states today. (in real life Laura was 17 and Almanzo 28, not sure why the apparent change in ages and 8 year shift in time for the books).

The bigger problem though is what happens to Laura’s friends. In the play one girl gets married when she’s “just barely 14.” I haven’t read any of the books, but have talked to a few people who have read them and did a bit of research. There are a number of instances of what today is prosecuted as statutory rape. Girls under 16 getting married and presumably having sex with men several years older. Worse, the girls parents approve of the rape, thus becoming accomplices in the rape of their own daughters.

Should today’s parents allow their children to read books or watch movies that celebrate what we now know is rape? Books that condone and celebrate parents encouraging the rape of their daughters?

I am strongly against general censorship by government, but I do believe that as parents we should be cautious of what our children read and watch on TV. Books that celebrate rape are just not appropriate for children. Along with banning the Little House series from our schools and homes we should look at a number of other books and video’s with similar rapes such as Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, and the Love Comes Softly series.

And it’s not just the rapes in these books, but other values such as Anne Shirley’s teen fling with the pervert Morgan who is more than old enough to be her father.

A final thought. As we were leaving the Guthrie and walking by the stage door I noticed a key performer leaving and walking down the street hand in hand with his boyfriend. I wonder if he realized the irony of playing a character who was considered normal and acceptable in Little House on the Prairie but today would be considered a pervert and prosecuted as a rapist, while in his real life he is today considered normal and acceptable, but would have been labeled a pervert and prosecuted for sodomy if he’d lived in Little House on the Prairie.

The subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis has presented a very unique opportunity that two groups across the nation are taking major advantage of.

The ‘crisis’ came about primarily because Fannie and Freddie relaxed their qualifications for obtaining a mortgage. People who 10 years ago would not have qualified (because they had no down payment and didn’t have sufficient income and job history), have been able to qualify under the new relaxed rules. Lower end neighborhoods across the country were flooded with these ‘subprime’ borrowers over the past few years. All of these people suddenly able to get loans (that we now know many could not afford) and becoming home buyers drove prices up in marginal neighborhoods and people who previously had no interest in selling suddenly were being offered enough money that selling became appealing.

Neighborhoods that were once relatively stable became filled with subprime borrowers who couldn’t make their payments and were foreclosed on. This resulting in entire neighborhoods with sometimes 50% or more of the homes on the market all at once and many for very low prices.

Muslims wasted little time with this opportunity. In some cases local mosques informally coordinate the selection of target neighborhoods for families to begin buying in to. In other cases a more formal representation group has worked with local housing authorities to assist with Muslims buying numbers of houses within a defined area.

GLBT folks were a bit slow but are quickly catching up. In some cities they’re hosting day long open house events in neighborhoods with realtors and housing authorities. All of the available properties are open for inspection and in many cases local GLBT groups or others provide wine and cheese to make it a truly enjoyable event.

Democrats belief and confidence in what government can accomplish truly amazes me. They have an unbelievably unrealistic idealistic view of government ability. It can rescue people from the depths of poverty, rehabilitate juvenile delinquents, provide complete health care to every living person, and make life all happy and rosy.

Republicans, rightly so, criticize them up one side and down the other for these foolish beliefs. Decade after decade, generation after generation, POTUS after POTUS, we see pretty much the same results from government social programs – nothing. And when we do see results it turns out it’s not the government after all, but individuals stepping up to the plate and doing it on their own. Of course in his speech this morning Barack Obama said we don’t need anymore of this “on your own” stuff.

There is certainly a need for some government social programs. A safety net to help people out for a brief period when they’re out of work is, in my opinion, a worthwhile benefit. But year after year and generation after generation of welfare isn’t good for anyone.

Young children need and deserve an extra helping hand if their parents aren’t in a position to fully care for them. Besides basic things like food and shelter, they need someone to walk along beside them, teach them basic life skills that their parents may not, help them with their homework, and maybe even just be someone to talk to occasionally. In most cases our governments have shown themselves completely inept in doing any of these things successfully. And I don’t really blame government because it’s simply not possible for any kind of government to succeed in the world of social programs.

This is an arena far better addressed by private charities that receive no government subsidies. Organizations that have people working for them who have a real passion for what they’re doing. Organizations that can fit their services to the local community and that allow people to choose who they want to help them. Some might choose a Christian organization, some Catholic, some Muslim, some Secular, some Hindu.

And you know what, some kids will fall through the cracks. And there will be calls for government programs to take up the slack. And we’ll be right back where we are today – with a greater number of kids in need than ever. Do we want hundreds of kids falling through the cracks of non-government programs or tens of thousands falling through the cracks of government programs?

When it comes to helping women learn to take care of their kids, learn job skills, and basically get up on their feet, there are numerous options. The best I’ve seen, the one who has one of the highest success rates in the country and is praised by people from sea to sea, is just about 5 blocks from where the Republican National Convention was held in St Paul last week. The Naomi Center is a privately funded organization that has had huge success working with women one on one to learn everything from the most basic cooking, cleaning, and homemaking skills to fairly advanced computer skills that will help them get a job.

One key to their success is the dependence they place on the women themselves. The women have to want to live there (with their children), they have to want to work hard, and they have to actually work hard. Otherwise they’re not admitted to the program. And if they don’t hold up their end of the bargain during the program? Their slot is given to someone who does want to be there enough to work at it.

The Republicans 5 blocks away don’t get a pass though. They have an even more unrealistic idealistic view of what government can accomplish. They generally do have a slightly more realistic view of government’s inability with regard to social welfare programs. It’s other social programs where they’re misled.

While Democrats just want to spend our money with wasteful government programs, the Republicans want to spend our money and throw us in jail with wasteful government programs. The Democrats programs are at least geared, on the surface anyway, towards helping people. I believe they do far more harm to the people they purport to help than actually help them, but that’s another issue. Government is simply not good at being social.

The Republicans (and some Democrats) believe that not just monetary programs, but also throwing people in prison, is the answer to many of our social problems. They think that throwing people in jail will solve our Alcohol Abuse, Drug Abuse, Prostitution, and Gambling problems. All problems that are just as bad today as they’ve ever been. Despite billions spent on them annually and thousands upon thousands arrested.

So while out of one side of their mouths Republicans scream at Democrats that government cannot solve social problems, out of the other side of their mouths they’re screaming that government can solve social problems. Which is it?

Guess what? Government equally screws up with all of them. These are all personal issues that need personal solutions. Someone has to decide that they want to free themselves from drugs or that they want to work their way out of poverty or that they want to stop drinking or that they want to get an education or that they want to stop working as a prostitute (note 1) or that they want to stop gambling.

Until someone decides this for themselves there’s little or nothing that any program can do for them, least of all an impersonal government program. And for those who do want help a private drug addiction or other program is likely a far better option than any government program run by bureaucrats.

It’s easy to foist our problems off on government. To think that government can solve these problems. It can’t. It has never solved any social problem nor even lessened any of them. The sooner we realize this and the sooner we put our resources towards private programs that actually work, the sooner we’ll begin to see some improvement.

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Note 1: While Melissa Farley and others like to scream that all women in prostitution are doing so against their will, reality doesn’t agree. By most estimates about 96% of US prostitutes are working in the industry of their own choice. One area where this is indicated is in prostitution legalization organizations, such as SWOPUSA.org, that are ALL run by prostitutes. You just don’t see people who are enslaved running slavery legalization organizations or victims of rape fighting for the legalization of rape. Now, this still leaves 4% of US prostitutes as victims, forced against their will. It IS governments place to criminalize, arrest, prosecute, and punish the scumbags who enslave others. The problem is that by focusing on the entire industry, over 90% of our resources are targeting consensual adult prostitution while likely less than 1% or 2% actually goes towards helping those who are victims of slavery. This is not a recipe for success. Government and Law Enforcement need to focus on those who need (and want) help getting free from criminal slavery.

The following is a very unfinished thought and even more an unfinished manuscript. It’s a work in progress on both levels. Read at your own risk.

There’s an interesting disconnect playing out across our land about age, sex, and marriage.

Through the first few hundred years of our country, up until sometime in the past century, we didn’t have major national issues of unwed mothers or STD’s. There were, to be sure, some of each, but not so many that there were huge concerns. These were footnotes, not major issues.

How quickly things change. Today, Disney can’t seem to find a wholesome teen girl anywhere. If it’s not Vanessa or Miley posing for nude pictures and sending them to friends (and thus the entire internet), it’s their 16-year-old star Jamie Lynn Spears getting pregnant out of wedlock. Then we find out that John McCain’s pick for VP has a 17-year-old daughter who’s 5 months pregnant.

Just over 60% of our high school seniors are sexually active and according to the CDC about 25% of our high school girls have an STD. 76% of sexually active US teens have had at least 2 sexual partners. And this in a supposed highly moral monogamous society.

In middle schools across the country girls are finding that taking nude or panty pics of themselves and emailing them to boyfriends and others is not just fun but an excellent way of getting the attention that so many of them seem to crave. Sometimes far more attention, from tens of thousands of men on the internet, than they’d intended.

Do Christians fair any better than non-Christians? Only marginally. Sarah Palin’s family are members of an Assembly of God church and I think that just about any high school student who’s involved in a church youth group can tell you that her 17-year-old daughter is not an anomaly, at least with regard to being sexually active. Don’t think you’re any better if you’re Baptist, Methodist, Willow Creek, Saddleback, or Lakewood. See the chart above.

Why can’t all our teens just keep their pants on?

Then down in Texas we have that group of strange dressing folks with the funny hairstyles out on the ranch. They likely have about the same number of sexually active teen girls as our Christian youth groups (or lower for 13, 14, and 15 year olds) The difference? While the average teen girl in the US is having sex with multiple guys and isn’t married to any of them (and most of these guys probably aren’t anywhere close to ready for marriage anyway), a sexually active teen girl in the FLDS is likely married to the father – who will stay with her and support her and her baby for life. And these are the ones we’re throwing in jail.

It’s God’s Fault

After all, he made us this way didn’t he?

Generally girls enter puberty in their early teens and guys anywhere from early to mid teens. By design our bodies, physically and mentally, are screaming “time for sex”. Did God screw up? Should he have designed us to not reach puberty and get all of these sexual desires until we’re 23 instead of 13?

For centuries, all of history in fact, these were pretty much non-issues. At least among the common folk. Girls got married at about 14 to a guy old enough to support and care for her and their children. Our actions were generally in line with how we were designed. Sure, there were problems, but apparently nothing even remotely like what we’re seeing today.

Over the past 100 years we’ve seen dramatic changes in our society. One that has had an especially dramatic impact on marriage is the time required to get an education before beginning any kind of career. For an ever growing number of us this is not just until we complete high school at 18, but includes university at 22, grad school at 25 or medical school at 30. This, combined with other issues, has driven up the average age of marriage a bit.

We’ve followed up on these changes by instituting a number of new laws and social norms over the past 50 years regarding age, marriage, and sex for everyone. All with good intentions. We began by saying that nobody under 12 or 13 could legally get married. No problem there. Over the past few years though we’ve slowly increased this minimum legal age to 17 in most states. At the same time we’ve developed this societal expectation that getting married under about 20 is ‘just not right’.

Then we decided that a guy being too much older than the girl was ‘just not right’. This led to a major shift in societal norms regarding the age difference of partners. Norms that had existed for thousands of years. We began to view an age difference of more than 3 or 4 years as abnormal. Then we instituted this in various laws criminalizing a relationship with more than 2 or 3 years age difference. In other words, if you’re going to make a baby just don’t do it with anyone old enough to be in a position to actually take some responsibility for her (note 1).

Have we in effect criminalized what God designed?

It’s like God is saying “I designed you this way and that worked well for a few thousand years, but now you want to do things differently and, well, it’s not working so well is it?”

A solvable problem?

If the question is, can we stop teen aged folks from having sex? I don’t think so.

If God designed us this way, there’s likely little we can do about it. This is wholly different than acting on a sinful desire to gossip, steal a car, gorge ourselves on cream cheese wontons, get drunk, or kill our neighbor. A 15-year-old girl having sex with her 22-year-old boyfriend is acting on a desire given them by God.

For the Bible believers out there, the Bible does not set unrealistic expectations for us and is actually quite practical. It says that if you can’t control your sexual desires, then marry the girl and quench your thirst.

Of course, we make that illegal and then wonder why we have so many problems with teen sex, STD’s, and pregnancy.

Not a popular opinion perhaps, but it is what it is. Nobody ever said God set out to be popular.

Every person is different. Some have lesser sex drives than others and some have more self-control than others. Some have a huge desire to get married or have sex, others focus is so much on other things like education or careers that sex and marriage are hardly a blip in their heads. And there are a boatload scattered throughout the middle. There are people with no sex drive and high self-control, others with high sex drive and no self-control, and others with massive sex drives and massive self-discipline – just not quite enough self-discipline in some cases.

Many have enough self discipline that they can hold off for a year or two. But the prospect of waiting 10 years?

What would happen if, instead of trying to fit everyone in to the same mold, we allowed for the differences in people and perhaps even encouraged some level of responsibility with regard to sex? If we reverted back to traditional laws of a minimum marriage age of 12 or 13 with those younger than 17 needing a parents approval. Maybe even require that one partner be over 17. You know, place responsibility back on the parents for raising children instead of on the state. Let parents who actually know those involved decide if someone is too old or too young or if the guy is a schmuck or if a 25-year-old guy getting a good start on his career will be a good husband to their 15-year-old daughter.

And then at a societal level changed our mindset from everyone waiting to get married until their twenties (and having indiscriminant sex with a variety of people until then) to allowing people to marry when they desired, even if that was 15. And then did away with our newfound fear of a 6 or 8 or whatever age difference. But at the same time strongly encouraged good choice in mates and above all, supported the newly married couple. Helped them complete their education and get settled in their careers.

Before we began instituting all of these laws and societal norms about minimum marriage ages and requiring partners to be close in age we had a bunch of problems. But did those problems even compare to the problems we have today?

Might going back to traditional laws and norms discourage the high numbers of multiple sexual partners we’re seeing in the US today? This would certainly help the STD situation. And while a husband having had multiple previous partners seems to hold only marginal negativity, at best, for his wife, the same is not true the other way. Might a higher number of girls limiting their sexual partners to just their husbands or future husbands have an impact on reducing our extremely high divorce rates?

Instead of encouraging no responsibility like we do today, might this encourage more responsible behavior?

By saying all of this I don’t think that we should stop encouraging people to wait until their twenties. If they can. That’s still probably best for most. At the same time, if they’re going to have sex and make babies anyway, let’s encourage as healthy an environment as we can.

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Note 1: Europe, with less than half the divorce rate of the US, one-fourth the unwed teen pregnancies, and one-third the abortion rate, is just the opposite. Instead of requiring partners to be close in age, society tends to favor the guy being somewhat older. Even in their laws, instead of requiring a close age as we do, they require that one partner be over 18, regardless of the age of the other partner.

Note: The chart above is comprised of averaging data from the CDC, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Guttmacher Institute. Some additional notes:

– 18% of US teens have had at least 4 sexual partners. 5 times that of Europe.

– 8% of a teen females had consensual sex with partners at least 6 years older. One third that of Europe and Asia.

– Teen sexual activity is highest among blacks, second highest among Hispanics, and lowest among whites.

– College bound students of any ethnicity are much less likely to be sexually active than non college bound students, in particular among college bound females.

– 8% of US teens between 15 and 19 become pregnant each year (13% of Blacks/Hispanics, 5% of Whites) with 30% ending in abortion.

– The US teen abortion rate is 3 times that of Europe.

– Teens girls in Europe are 5 times more likely to have a single sex partner and 4 times more likely to marry that partner than US teens. Europe has less than one half the divorce rate as the US.

John McCain stands as a vocal critic of wasteful government spending. In particular he’s decried the earmark system.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, perhaps not so much. As Mayor of Wasilla she didn’t fight against earmarks, but fought for them, about $27 million of them. Yet, she says that she’s against earmarks.

Typical political double-speak? More of the same politics we’ve come to love and adore? Say one thing, do another?

As Mayor of Wasilla should Palin have stood on ideological belief and turned down federal money that could help her community? The very community that she’d been elected to help?

Well, there’s even more. The money wasn’t just freely offered. Palin actively sought it. She hired a lobbying firm in Washington DC to lobby congress for the money. Does that sound like someone who’s against earmarks?

She certainly could have done nothing. Apparently no Wasilla mayor before her had ever lobbied congress for money. There was no requirement for her to do so. And, why didn’t Wasilla pay for these projects themselves?

Could the problem be that the federal government had already taken the money of the good people of Wasilla and Palin simply wanted it back?

Every year the federal government takes a bunch of money from us, through the income tax system and through corporate taxes.

If I make bicycles I have to pay a percentage of my corporate income to the federal government. So, when I sell you a bike I have to add a hundred dollars or so to the price to cover these taxes. If you pay $300 for a video game, NOT including any taxes added on, consider that about $50 of that goes to the federal government. The manufacturer, distributor, and retailer all have to pay corporate taxes to the federal government. As do all of their suppliers such as the trucking company that brought it to the store and the janitorial company that cleans the store every night.

Now, some of this money goes to legitimate federal government activities such as national defense. Some of it though, an estimated 40%, is given back to us (the states, counties, and cities) through redistribution. Redistribution though is expensive. It takes a lot of people to manage a system like this. Efficient it’s not. So rather than a dollar being taken from us and then given back to us, a dollar is taken from us, 40 cents is lopped off the top to cover the costs of taking it, giving it back, and monitoring our use of it, and so at best maybe 60 cents actually gets used for any real benefit.

Benefit? Yeah, me too. Rather than us deciding locally what we want to do with our money and how it will serve us best, a bunch of folks a few thousand miles away and who have probably never set foot in our community are deciding for us. Worse, they may not give any of it back to us, instead giving a double or triple portion to someone else.

So, the sad fact is, the federal government has already taken our money and one of the best ways to get it back is through the earmark system. It is the system that is in place. It’s ugly. It’s inefficient. It’s wasteful. It doesn’t serve us. But – It is.

Is a mayor of Wasilla, Alaska really in a position to do anything to change the system? Should she have stood by and let others get their money back and not fought to get the money back that the people of Wasilla had had taken from them? Just let that money go to someone else for a midnight basketball program?

Did the citizens of Wasilla elect her to fight the myriad of problems of our federal government or was she elected to, within the system currently in place, help make Wasilla the place that the residents wanted it to be? Is it double-speak to use the accepted system currently in place when you’re under it, but to turn around and scrap it when you’re in a position to do so?

In addition to the earmarks themselves, one question that may need to be addressed is if there was anything inappropriate in Palin’s hiring of the lobby firm, namely, were there any kickbacks to members of congress or others in return for getting Wasilla all of those nice funds.

People across the net are all atwitter over the revelation that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, plans to marry the father, and raise the child.

Not that long ago this would have been not much more than a footnote in the campaign rather than major news story. In the past few decades we’ve elevated our societal piousness to unprecedented levels. We’ve taken what was normal for centuries and millenniums and made it abnormal. I encourage anyone reading this to check your own family genealogy before deciding to be too critical of Palin. You are very likely to find that many of your very own ancestors first children were born less than 9 months from when they were married and that many were 17 or younger.

When I was growing up we referred to these as shotgun weddings. The reality was that shotguns were rarely involved, though the look in dad’s eyes towards his new son-in-law could likely do more damage than buckshot. The deathly looks over, both families generally came together and pitched in to help the new couple prepare for and then raise their new child. And these scenes have never been limited to the mountain folks in Appalachia, but cut across every societal, racial, and geographic boundary. YOU and I, my dear reader, are very likely the products of many such events.

And oh my if this had happened in Texas…

There is much that is very interesting about McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin. She hunts moose, runs marathons. and takes on corrupt politicians in her own party. If she were a man she’d be a man’s man. When it comes to macho she outmans both Obama and Biden.

What I’m finding perhaps the most interesting though is that she is most often being compared, not to her VP rival Joe Biden, but to the leader of the Democratic ticket – Barack Obama. Everyone is talking about who between Obama and Palin has the most pertinent experience. Which one of these two is most prepared to be Commander-In-Chief? Does Obama or Palin have the best understanding of our economy? Does Palin or Obama have the better grasp of our energy situation? If we face another terror incident do we want Obama or Palin calling the shots?

Sarah Palin isn’t being compared to Joe Biden and Obama supporters don’t want to compare Obama to John McCain. Everyone wants to compare Obama to Palin. What does this say about the two tickets?

There is a lot of angst among many people about the ‘untraditional marriages’ of the FLDS and in particular the age of some brides. As I’ve mentioned earlier, for those who study history the FLDS marriages not only don’t seem unusual, but are actually quite normal. Historically anyway. Following are some things to help put this in to better perspective and as a follow-up to this post that discussed this issue.

For those who are interested in additional information on this I’d strongly recommend reading ‘Marriage, A History’ by Stephanie Coontz.

Quick Disclaimer: I do not believe that in today’s culture it is advisable for anyone to marry younger than 18. On the other hand, I do not believe that government interference, particularly in the case of a sub-culture such as the FLDS, is beneficial.

(Click on the image for more detail)

This chart is based on general historical research up through 1350ce and based on genealogical data from 1350 to 2000. Each data point represents 25 years or one quarter century. This chart assumes a human existence of 8,000 years. The least amount of time humans are believed to have existed is 6,000 years. Many scientists believe 10,000 to 18,000 is more likely. Jared Diamond posits a 100,000 year existence. Imagine the date to your left as long as you desire…

Throughout the bulk of history and throughout the world it is widely believed that women married relatively soon after their first menstrual period or menarche and what information we have indicates that most married between about 13 and 17 with the majority marrying at about age 14. Beginning in about 300ce the upper age seems to have begun increasing and around 800ce leveled off at about 19.

In general it is believed that the wealthier brides married later and those in cities married later than those in rural communities.

Genealogical data on marriage dates and age of the bride and groom begins to become useable from about 1350 onward. A research project tabulating this genealogical data is currently underway with preliminary data included in the chart. This genealogical data is based on genealogies of ancestors of people residing in the US and was procured from Ancestry.com and the LDS Family History Center. Two independent sets of GEDCOM data were collected and analyzed. Each set included at least 100 useable marriages in each quarter century except for the period 1375 to 1450 which averaged 89 marriages per quarter century. A useable marriage was one where the birth date of both participants as well as the marriage date were present in the data. Both sets produced similar numbers.

The data at this point is believed relatively accurate though it is unverified. Most of this data is entered by amateur genealogists. While accuracy is somewhat of a concern, that both data sets utilizing different family names produced nearly identical results provides some level of comfort. I am not a statistician so I am relying on others for statistical expertise.

The average bridal age is the average of all marriages. The upper and lower ages were calculated based on the outer bounds to include at least the most concise 80^th percentile to 1/10 year increments. Stats folks reading this will probably understand what I just wrote far better than I. In most years the upper and lower bounds included over 90% of all marriages. Outliers generally tended to be 40% below range and 60% above. While most second marriages were believed eliminated, some could not be accurately determined.

The data indicated relative stability in ages from about 1350 to the early 1800’s. Around 1820 the upper age began to increase.

During the mid 18^th century there appeared to be a very noted temporary increase in bridal ages of those people in southern Europe. Not sure what the cause of this was. This drove up the upper end of the range but had only minimal impact on the overall average.

The two most significant jumps occurred in the quarter century ending in 1825 when the average age rose from 15.6 to 17 and in the quarter century ending in 2000 when the average age rose from 20 to 24.5.

The average age of all marriages from the genealogical data is 16.38. The lower age range dipped below 13 in the quarter centuries ending in 1425, 1500, 1550, 1675, and 1700.

There are clearly incidences where children need to be removed from their homes. Some parents are intentionally abusive and some are either mentally incapable of caring for their children or are just plain stupid. Removal though needs to be extremely rare, only when absolutely necessary, and only when removal will clearly produce a better outcome for the child than the status quo.

Current laws around removal of children run something like: “CPS must prove by sufficient evidence to satisfy a person of ordinary prudence and caution that: (1) reasonable efforts have been made to prevent or eliminate the need to remove the child from the child’s home; and (2) allowing the child to remain in the home would be contrary to the child’s welfare.”

Or, to sustain a child’s removal from the parents, TDFPS must prove at an adversary hearing that “(1) there was a danger to the physical health or safety of the child which was caused by an act or failure to act of the person entitled to possession and for the child to remain in the home is contrary to the welfare of the child; (2) the urgent need for protection required the immediate removal of the child and reasonable efforts, consistent with the circumstances and providing for the safety of the child, were made to eliminate or prevent the child’s removal; and (3) reasonable efforts have been made to enable the child to return home, but there is a substantial risk of a continuing danger if the child is returned home.” Tex. Fam. Code sec. 262.201(b).

Or, “a child should be removed if he or she would be in danger with the parent or guardian or if “continuation of the child in the home would be contrary to the child’s welfare.””

These are all good as far as they go but fall short in one extremely critical element – will the removal be better for the child.

All of these existing laws make an assumption on some level that if a child is in any danger in their current home that state care will at least be safer. This is a very wrong assumption.

– The removal act itself will very likely cause mental and emotional harm to the child.

– The removal will, rightly or wrongly, likely cause harm to the child’s relationship to their parents.

– Living in any form of institutional care for any length of time is likely to cause mental and emotional harm to the child.

– An estimated 25% of children in foster care are abused.

All of these harms are also very likely to be life-long. Each mistake in removal will, at the hands of government, cause permanent harm to a child who otherwise would not be harmed.

All state laws then should include an element similar to. “That with the knowledge that the child will endure permanent mental and emotional harm by the removal and institutionalization itself and with the knowledge that the child may likely be physically and emotionally abused in institutional and foster care, that remaining in the home is clearly and convincingly a greater danger to the child than than all of those dangers presented by removal.”

This raises the bar to a more appropriate level and makes it more clear to all concerned the gravity of the decision being made.

Edit: Just after posting this I was told of this excellent post and comments on IPercieve

In this post I mentioned the 51 marriage licenses the state of Texas issued to brides under the age of 14 in 1970 and speculated that based on our current thinking these must all be awful marriages with such terribly young brides and such. So bad in fact that today we’d make their marriages illegal, jail the parents, and take away their children.

Well, we now know how 7 of these brides lives turned out. 4 are still married, 1 died, 1 was widowed after 27 years of marriage, and 1 divorced after 11 years of marriage. The 4 who are still married all said that they are still HAPPILY married. They’ve had some rough times and one of the couples separated for a year, but all are still married, all have kids, and all said they have no regrets about their marriage.

The bride who died was married for 31 years, died when she was 43 in a car crash, had 7 children and 4 grandchildren. According to her 29 year old son his parents were the happiest people he’d ever known. They loved each other and loved their family. They were, and are, Baptist and were married in a Baptist church. Shame on the Baptists and state of Texas for allowing such an atrocious marriage.